


we know when to kiss and we know when to kill

by red_sky



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: M/M, also bryan only shows up briefly at the end, so if you're looking for daniel bryan fic i am sad that this is not the one for you, superhero babies as bloodthirsty kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 05:11:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_sky/pseuds/red_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rise of kings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we know when to kiss and we know when to kill

**Author's Note:**

> Look, Punk and Cena are obviously each other's only equals and instead of keeping them in separate storylines, WWE should have paired them together to wreak havoc. This is an imagining of how that could have happened.
> 
> This fic references the following events; Wrestlemania 22 in Chicago, Money in the Bank 2011, the 1000th episode of Raw in 2013, and Payback 2013. It does veer into AU territory towards, and sticks to kayfabe throughout its entirety.
> 
> Not real, never happened, totally not getting paid for this, this only exists because WWE refuses to give me the satisfying storyline conclusions we all deserve. And because I love Punk/Cena.

Contrary to popular belief, John knows what it means to fight. He’s been fighting as long as he can remember; growing up in a house with four brothers, becoming battle-born was inevitable. He had to learn real quick just how hierarchy worked and how to work it to his advantage. Back then, he didn’t have his intimidating size to back him up, as all the Cena boys were fairly equal in that regard, so he had to use the very thing everyone assumed he didn’t have; his ability to really see what’s going on and adapt accordingly. A skill that seemed to come quite naturally to him, a skill that allowed no one to see what was coming.

For a long time, even John himself couldn’t put a name to it, burying it deep inside himself until he forgot it even existed. Because despite knowing how to fight, and knowing how to win, John didn’t want to acknowledge it. Fighting should be the last resort; it should only happen when he has no other choice, and manipulation should never, ever be the tool in which to achieve the win. He wanted to believe the script that had been written for centuries, the ultimate ideal for all good, moral men, because no man wants to believe they’re not good. No decent, honorable man wanted to accept that he’s a monster.

But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he tried to fight valiantly and justly, it never satiated that _ache_ , that hunger knawing at his stomach. That voice in the back of his mind, whispering beneath the deafening chorus line of good and true and just and everything pure in the world. That burn in his muscles to crush and bend everything around him, that desire to _take_ , that way he instinctively knew, just as his heart knew to beat and his lungs knew to take a breath, that it all should be _his_.

And when that lingering whisper starts to echo back to him in someone else’s voice, well… it might take a few years, but eventually, John starts to listen, and remembers.

  
Punk is more than a whirlwind, more than a supernova. He is an entire universe, an empty, fathomless force that the smaller, less dense bodies can’t help but gravitate around. John sees it immediately, from the very first moment they lock eyes as Punk is getting fitted in his pinstripe suit, hair pulled into a ponytail underneath the fedora. John doesn’t remember his name, everyone keeps referring to him as kid, but he is no boy or man. He is beyond anything that can be captured with feeble endearments designed to keep him in place. His place is beyond the stars, beyond constellations, and certainly beyond the mere mortals who unconsciously sit on their knees before him as they hem his pants. King, as meager of a word it is, is the only one that can come close to encapsulating him. No one else realizes it, but John does, and most frighteningly of all, Punk does, too.

When they lock eyes, John sees a world that hasn’t come to pass, but a world he very much wants to. A world that should frighten him, but it doesn’t, and that’s the scariest part of all.

  
So John fights. He fights to ignore the slow tilting of his axis, he fights for the future he tells himself he wants and not the one he saw in Punk’s eyes. For a while, he’s successful. For a while, he racks up wins and he racks up championships, but it doesn’t curb the ache in his soul. He fights to tell himself that it’s enough, he fights to remind himself that this is the way it should be. He ignores Punk as much as he can without seeming callous or, more appropriately, frightened. But Punk knows, and like John, he adapts as needed. He waits for John. His smiles, though…John fears that he won‘t wait forever, and he fights to ignore the thrill that crawls up his spine at the thought of the day when Punk will call.

  
As much as John prides himself on being able to see what’s happening around him, the truth is that he is rusty. It’s been so long since he relied on his eyes that he makes the mistake of thinking that Punk is the puppet master, that he is the creator who molds the world around him into what he wants it to be. This is true, yes, but what he failed to realize that while Punk may be the ventriloquist, John is the only one he‘s not controlling. It’s hard not to feel that way, especially since Punk is so young yet so, quite frankly, terrifying. And John is so desperate to hold onto the façade that he’s built of himself, so it’s easy to miss the way Punk is positioning _himself_ around John, not the other way around.

He still doesn’t see it, even when Punk puts him through a table and drops his poison on the unsuspecting, adoring masses. As he lays dazed, splinters of cheap wood digging into his back, he hears Punk tell the world that he doesn’t hate John (a funny way to show it, but Punk has never spoken any accepted language), but underneath that he hears Punk telling him, “I was a fool to waste my time on you; now you‘re going to pay.”

The tragedy is that he does not realize that Punk didn’t put him through that table because he was angry or because he hated John; Punk put him through that table because he wanted John to know he _would_ wait forever, and violence is John’s first language (albeit the one he forgot).

  
John realizes now that the entire build up to Money in the Bank was actually four weeks of the most erotic foreplay he’s ever had in his life. He’s always had what he thought was a healthy appetite for sex, but fighting with Punk is better than any fuck he’s ever had. He should have been angry, he should have been furious at everything that came from Punk’s mouth during those promos, but he isn’t because he knows Punk’s right, and he is actually _relieved_.

When Punk calls him a dynasty, the derision is simply for show. John sees in Punk’s eyes how much he means it and how Punk would never accept anything less. The pleasure that rolls off his body as he says it blows John’s pupils wide and makes his breath catch in his throat, and he punches Punk because his only other alternative is to kiss him, and John’s not so far gone not to realize how bad of an idea that would be on national television.

The kisses come later, although not much later.

  
They fuck and they fight, and really, there isn’t much difference between the two. Both are sacred; both are revered. They move in the ring together with precision and brutality, and they slam the headboard against every hotel wall with the same violence. Punk jerks him off with the same fervor he slams his knee against John’s chin, and it is painful and exquisite and everything John has ever needed but wouldn’t admit to himself. Punk’s hands are rough and his tongue is sharp, but his eyes glow, and when John tells him he doesn’t think it can get any better than this, Punk’s voice is soft as he promises, yes, it can and it will.

  
At this point, John feels more complete than he ever has in his life. But that ache doesn’t go away; it becomes stronger, and he doesn’t know how, when he has Punk.

  
There are trials to go through; John isn’t so naïve to think there wouldn’t be. Egos like theirs are always destined to clash, and there’s always going to be misunderstandings that turn into verbal jabs which morph into fists flying which lead to opportunistic leaches jumping in to destroy what they’ve built. John knows that the two of them together could be dangerous to the WWE higher brass. After all, he is their White Knight, and no White Knight could ever lower himself to be seen with the Evil Dragon, let alone _love_ him. John finds himself in nonsensical feuds with people he can’t be bothered to give two shits about, while Punk holds the belt yet goes on before him every damn night. It’s stupid, they both know it, but they’re still men at this point. Men make mistakes. Men let others hold them down and men let others whisper in their ear, tell lies to suit their own agendas, and men fall for those lies.

John has always needed Punk, but it isn’t until Punk is standing in the ring with Paul Heyman at his shoulder, his fat fucking face smirking and his beady eyes squinting in triumph, that John realizes that he has built Punk up in his head so much that he never saw how much Punk needed _him_ , too.

He waits, though. Punk did it for him; he can do the same.

  
When Punk returns at Payback, John is the first person he goes to, and they fall into bed immediately. John kisses each of Punk’s eyelids and makes him promise that they will never, ever listen to the whispers of anyone else again.

  
When the WWE brass steps in once again to squash what they view as a bug on their windshield of perfection in the form of Daniel Bryan, Punk decides it’s time to declare war. He’s fucking John into the mattress, chest pressed into John’s back as he holds John’s wrists against the top of the headboard when he asks John if he still feels that ache, that pressing _need_ to take everything and crush it. John breathes out a yes, and when Punk smiles against his ear and tells him they’re going to devour the world, John comes harder than he ever has in his life.

  
No one sees it coming. Bryan is getting slaughtered by The Shield while Orton and Triple H laugh at ringside, and when the lights go out then come back on, no one knows what happened, except that everyone except Bryan is laid out bleeding. They don’t stop at just the Authority, they go after every single person who has been a complacent cog in the wheel, even the guys John may have once called friends. Nice, muscled sheep, too afraid to stand for anything. John is sickened at the idea that he once thought he could be one of them. The only one of them that doesn’t completely disgust him is Bryan, and he suspects that has more to do with the soft spot Punk has for him from their early days in Ring of Honor together. He’s not part of the problem, Punk says, but he’s not one of us.

No, Bryan isn’t one of them. There isn’t going to be another one of them, because John and Punk aren’t just two peas in a pod or any other ridiculous cliché. They are the same; they are both the hunger, and God, it feels good to indulge, to finally sate that hunger for violence and fighting and mind games. It never lasts, of course, but Punk always leads them to the next kill, bigger than the one before it, and no one is none the wiser as to who is destroying the WWE from inside out.

Eventually, they will reveal their face, but for now, it’s more fun this way. Eventually, there will be no more flesh left in the WWE for them to devour, and all that will remain are rotting corpses. But there are always other companies ripe for the taking.

They used to fight and fuck; now they fuck and _conquer_.


End file.
